Blame it on Rioja

Elena Adell, winemaker at Bodegas Juan Alcorta in Logroño.

My colleague Kelly Bucher alerted me to an interesting article that appeared last week in the Wall Street Journal. Entitled “The Ladies of Spain,” the piece profiles the growing preponderance of female winemakers and bodega proprietors in Spain, particularly true in the D.O. of Rías Baixas, located along Spain’s NW coast and famous for its fish and shellfish-friendly white wines based on the Albariño grape variety. According the article, women now run over half of the region’s 198 wineries.

“In famous regions like Rioja or Ribera del Duero,” one winemaker says, “Office politics are almost as important as talent, so you have to fight the old guard. In Rías Baixas everyone is young and open to change.”

Rías Baixas indeed has a very impressive record, but the story in Rioja is not so cut and dry.

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The #1 downloaded dance track on iTunes at the moment (and indeed for most of the summer) is a song called “Just Dance” by an extremely talented young performer who goes by the name Lady Gaga (pictured above, left).

Lady Gaga and her two backup dancers, collectively known as the Haus of Gaga, were recently asked to perform on the crazy-popular Fox TV series “So You Think You Can Dance?”, and that performance aired just two nights ago. According to informal online research of recent Nielsen ratings, the show regularly attracts around 8 million viewers each week.

It was a killer performance and it’s likely to catapult Lady Gaga into yet another realm of popularity and stardom.

Click here to check it out

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